The Office - Floorboard Repair

The first attempt at floorboard repair has been tackled and completed with amazing success and resulted in another cool find. With the help of M & D the rectangle of black stuff was prised and drilled of the floor and it turned out to be an old enamel sign which followed the mainly financial theme of posters found under the carpet.

Even after a clean up the sign is pretty badly damaged from having been very thoroughly nailed to the floor. It seems a shame to have used it to cover what was a pretty minor little hole. The cracked enamel around the nail holes actually make it look like it has been shot up. I think this is going to be the last find in the house, there is not much more to rip up.

We patched the floor with an old Baltic pine floor found in a friends backyard and when the damaged board was cut out it was the first time there has been a chance to look under the house. To my huge relief everything looked good! Lots of space, no water, no animals (so I have no idea what makes the scratchy noise at night) and no weird smells.

Kitchen Inspiration

Image taken from Remodelista

And so it begins...

All the small jobs that needed to be done to make the place secure (you can no longer get into the house just by pushing the windows), clean and a little less smelly are done and work has started on the first room.

The Office is the first room to be tackled, I really need a desk and a chair would be nice. This is the room day one, the carpet has been removed (which has done a lot to help with getting rid of the smell) and so has the bookshelf in the corner. It turned out that the shelves had been put in to fill up the space left by the origanal back door when the kitchen was put on. In a desperate bid for some sunshine, the pooch is having a quick rest on a cleaning rag sitting in a pile of sawdust! I think he sees his role as foreman in this renovation.

The room is missing some bits of skirting boards and in a bid to embrace the reuse, recycle and repurpose philosophy I spent part of the weekend tracking down skirting boards that would match the original ones at one of the local wreckers yards. With a lot of hunting through piles of boards, running home to check if they matched and hunting again we found a perfect match (for only $10) and here they are stripped and waiting for sanding along with walls floor and skirtings that are still there.

Now the hunt begins for old masonite joining strips!

Oh My God....That Carpet!

This has to be one of the most satisfying things I have ever done! Ripping up the carpet is fantastic, it is dramatic and permanent and exactly the kind of thing you cannot do to a rental. Though the fun does seem to wither away when you have to pull out every one of those carpet staples, whoever first put in the carpet was a big fan of the humble carpet staple and did not hold back with the staple gun. The front room was a marvel, first I removed the carpet, then the soggy felt carpet underlay, then the old 60's lino (this could be a keeper), then a layer of wet compressed cardboard and then the most fantastic find. Old posters!

The black and white banner actually reads "Convert maturing war bonds and stocks before November 5". I can imagine this running around a wall like a wall paper border.

The posters aren't in perfect condition but they feel like they are part of the house and I think this Commonwealth Loan poster might make an appearance in the office.

A New House

A new house....a run down cottage. In an attempt not to bore my family and friends to death with my house obsession and new habit of talking about spiral balances and gate repairs I am starting this blog. So it is here that I will rant about frightening holes in the floor, talk for far to long about velvet covered lampshades and change my mind a million times over the colour of skirting boards.

I am starting this determined to do as much as I can of the renovation myself, so it will be one of the longest renovations ever attempted. I want to remember the disasters, which I am sure there will be a lot of, as much as I want to revel in the glory of the successes.

Hello new House.